The Netherlands: What the Dutch can teach the world about remote work - by Katie Bishop

If you’ve been balancing your laptop on a precarious stack of cookbooks, or lamented VPN speed from your kitchen table, you’re not alone. Ever since restrictions were put in place to slow the spread of Covid-19, companies have been scrambling to enable colleagues to work from home.

As we adapt to the much-cited ‘new normal’, some experts are predicting that remote work might be here to stay. This is leaving many nervously eyeing up our makeshift home desk set-ups, and wondering how on earth we can handle the backache.

But for some, remote working is just another day at the office .Thousands of workers in the Netherlands benefit from the country’s astonishingly flexible work culture. While the percentage of employed persons usually working remotely before the coronavirus outbreaklingered at around 4.7% in the UK, and 3.6% in the US, 14.1% of the Netherland’s workforce reports usually working away from the office. The Netherlands has long led the global shift toward remote work, with only Finland
catching up in recent years while other countries lag behind.

“When the pandemic started, I suddenly found myself playing the part of a remote-work coach for my wife and our neighbours,” says Yvo van Doorn, an Amsterdam-based engineer. “I was suddenly answering questions about home networks and video conferencing. It was eye-opening because I’d taken these things for granted.”


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What the Dutch can teach the world about remote work - BBC Worklife

Britain: Why Brexit Would Be Bad For Employment Rights

Imagine a country in which there is no statutory right to paid holiday, no legal limit on the number of hours employees can be required to work, no right to a daily rest period, no laws to prevent employers discriminating against workers who are disabled or who have particular religious beliefs, and no right for employees to take time off work to look after a sick child.

This was the UK before the New Labour government was elected in 1997. Since then a substantial number of employment rights have been introduced – most of which have their roots in EU legislation.

Thanks to the EU, employers cannot treat part-time workers less favourably than full-time workers, working parents have a right to take leave to look after their children, and temporary agency workers and workers with fixed-term contracts are entitled to the same basic conditions as comparable workers with permanent contracts.

Employees also have rights to paid holiday and rest periods, as well as the right to be informed and consulted about matters that directly concern them at work. Employers, meanwhile, are forbidden from discriminating against their employees on grounds of religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation.

There’s strong reason to believe that many of these rights would be lost should Britain leave the EU.

Read more:n Britain: Why Brexit Would Be Bad For Employment Rights